If Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts were seeking re-election she could crack a bottle of Okanagan sparkling white wine right now with West Vancouver Mayor Michael Smith and District of North Vancouver Mayor Richard Walton, both of whom are running unopposed.
Watts’ approval rating is an astronomically high and region-leading 74 per cent, assuring her an all-but-certain victory. Not that she cares.
Coun. Linda Hepner is running for mayor on Watts’ Surrey First slate and she has to be hoping that some enchanted pixie dust from the departing mayor lands on her, because the situation in Surrey is highly fluid.
In Vancouver, Mayor Gregor Robertson has the approval of 52 per cent of those polled, but only 10 per cent strongly approve. That’s probably enough to fend off his main challenger, NPA candidate Kirk LaPointe, but the incumbent mayor is far from armour clad.
“The level of moderate approval suggests that Robertson isn’t setting the world on fire, but voters clearly aren’t seeing anything better,” said Canseco.
Voters in Surrey aren’t quite sure what they are seeing.
A poll commissioned by Surrey First and released this week by Innovative Research Group places Hepner in the lead with 40 per cent of the decided vote. But just a week ago, an Insights West poll gave former mayor Doug McCallum a similar lead, especially among people under 35 — the age group least likely to vote.
What is certain is that the situation is completely uncertain, said pollster Mario Canseco of Insights West. Such is the popularity vacuum left by Watts that, even after Watts endorsed Hepner, nearly 50 per cent of Surrey voters are undecided about who will get their vote.
According to a new poll released this week by Insights, the Surrey fight is a two-issue race. Crime and transportation are the only concerns that move the needle for voters in one of Canada’s fastest growing cities
“I think McCallum was smart to put the word ‘safe’ in the name of his party; it’s the one issue where Surrey First might be vulnerable,” said Canseco.
Who Surrey voters will hold to account for the city’s omnidirectional rush hour is anybody’s guess, he said.
Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan is likely eyeing up the drinks cabinet, too, with an approval rating of 67 per cent, the highest of any incumbent seeking election. Corrigan appears to have played the Kinder Morgan pipeline debate to perfection.
No single issue is rising above the rest to create problems for the four-term titan. Burnaby residents appear almost equally concerned about crime, transportation, economic development and poverty — which is to say, not very.
Ditto for Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie, who is leading the field with a cushy 60-per-cent approval. As in Burnaby, only the cost of housing registers any significant concern among potential voters.
Housing is listed as the top issue by 46 per cent of potential voters in Vancouver, the second strongest concern registered in any municipality in Metro Vancouver after Surrey’s result for crime (48 per cent), according to the Insights poll.
Changing demographics may be a vulnerability for Vision, Canseco suggested. Younger voters who were enamoured with the party’s Greenest City vision are older now and trading in their bikes for cars and looking to buy homes.
“So now housing is their No. 1 issue,” he said. “They want to know what the city can do to help them buy a house.”
Vision’s promise to end street homelessness, too, could come back to haunt them.
“I think the problem in Vancouver with housing is that Vision has overpromised,” he said. “This council has talked a lot about poverty and homelessness and pledged to end homelessness within a certain time frame, and now this is providing ammunition for their rivals.”
Indeed, 62 per cent of Vancouverites rate Vision’s record on homelessness and poverty as bad or very bad, hardly ideal for an issue that the party staked its reputation on.
Only Abbotsford — where the city dumped truckloads of stinking chicken manure on a homeless camp and police were accused of slashing tents and spraying bear repellent — has a worse rating on homelessness and poverty than Vancouver. Ironically, Abbotsford gets top marks for its sanitation services (91 per cent approval) and Mayor Bruce Banman enjoys a personal approval rating of 65 per cent, despite the city’s treatment of the homeless.
The main wells of discontent in Metro Vancouver appear to be Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows and the Langleys.
Poll respondents in Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows are prepared to make changes at city hall: 53 per cent say it’s time for “significant” change and another 31 per cent want at least “minor” change, by far the greatest appetite for change in Metro Vancouver.
Almost one third of respondents rank economic development as the area’s biggest concern and there’s no doubt that the completion of the Pitt River Bridge and the Golden Ears Bridge raised expectations for renewed prosperity in Maple Ridge. Instead, the Ridge continues to struggle with traffic congestion, street homelessness and persistent headlines about drug and weapons seizures, all of which appear to reflect badly on leadership.
Nearly six in 10 respondents say the municipal government is doing a poor job dealing with crime and the approval rating given mayors in Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows is the lowest in the entire region at 39 per cent.
The mayors in Langley Township and the City of Langley are the only other leaders who have an approval rating under 50 per cent, and 63 per cent say it’s time to make changes at city hall, according to poll data.
Discontent may have its roots in how those governments are dealing with growth and development.
Fully 75 per cent of respondents from the Langleys believe that developers have too much influence at city hall, a figure that tied for second in Metro Vancouver. That sentiment may have its roots in the township’s fast-growing Willoughby development — where more than 4,000 new homes have been approved in the past three years — and the pressure that growth is placing on roads, transit and schools, one of the most contentious topics at a recent debate for mayoral candidates from the township and the city.
